Turkey has reinstated its YouTube ban only days after it lifted its
country-wide block of the video-sharing site.

A Turkish court has ordered a 30-month ban on YouTube, after a video was posted on the site purportedly showing the former chairman of the country’s opposition party in bedroom with a female aide and cannot be removed.

The ruling, comes after a different Turkish court ended the YouTube ban at the weekend, which had been in place since May 2008, after videos were posted which the Turkish government said were insulting to the republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

The ban was originally lifted after the ‘offensive’ clips were removed by a German company, which had been employed by the Turkish government, using YouTube’s anti-copyright infringement technology.

However, Google, YouTube’s parent company, re-published the videos in question soon afterwards, saying that they were not infringing anybody’s copyright.

Consequently, a different Turkish court in Ankara, has now ordered the Turkey’s Telecommunication Board to reinstate the ban, if Google refuses to remove all the videos that are deemed offensive to the Turkish government.